Critical Commentary
"Kyle Harvey’s July sounds the space of the page the world pivots around. It walks through every room of a redacted sky. It is “a language (inside of a language).” It is a ghost making grave rubbings. July is listening. July is alive."
- Eric Baus, The Tranquilized Tongue (City Lights Books)
"Kyle Harvey's July is a restrained jaunt deep into its weird sluice. Reading it is like looking at a solar eclipse."
- Ed Skoog, Rough Day (Copper Canyon Press)
Kyle Harvey’s July activates for its reader what the month of the July feels like in December, how warmth’s sensation feels when it’s dark and cold and dreary out. When Harvey writes “July is truth is/ the color of teeth/wealth/ & well/of clear water,” his “July” is a stand-in for everything that humanity lies about during its perpetual search for the “clear water” of truth. Like so many of the poetic foremothers and fathers that he namechecks at the beginning of the collection, Harvey’s poetry searches not for meaning but the meaning of meaning; “Queen of Black Oil/ don’t ask me//what I mean/ /meaning/ is the murder of process.” July isn’t a chapbook full of poems about the month of the July. It’s a chapbook full of poems about what the month of July felt like before there was a language to describe it, before July’s sweaty presence found July’s sweaty word. Harvey’s words are honeyed against the elements and, like it or not, linger in your mouth long afterwards.
- Jeff Alessandrelli, This Last Time Will Be The First, Burnside Review
"Essentially empty of narrative elements, July lets the objects speak for the interior life of the speaker. “Don’t ask me / what I mean / meaning / is the murder of process,” serves as a mission statement for July. Kyle Harvey can certainly feel a feeling and reflect those feelings."
- Sean Shearer, Editor-in-Chief, BOAAT PRESS
